Slot machines and their video lottery terminal (VLT) equivalents traditionally operate with adjacent vertical reel strips that combine to form a matrix of displayed elements for each spin. For example, a hypothetical set of four reels in their entireties might appear as shown at 10 in FIG. 1a, with the shaded portion demonstrating what might be revealed to the player upon executing a spin.
In determining whether a spin has resulted in any winnings, slot machines and VLTs are programmed with pre-determined “pay lines” and “pay tables”. In a simple example, a player only wins if the direct horizontal pattern reveals a certain number of matching elements. In such a case, the “pay line” would be a horizontal line for any of the rows in the shaded 3×4 matrix in FIG. 1a. These rows are reproduced as shown in the chart 12 in FIG. 1b. For example, in FIG. 1b, row 1 shows two “Dollar” elements, row 2 shows two “Seven” elements, and row 3 shows no matches.
The pay table dictates the prize awarded if the number of matches reaches a certain level for a certain element in a pay line. For example, if the pay table dictates that three or more “Seven” matches in a pay line wins $10, none of the above highlighted rows would win. If the pay table dictates that two or more “Seven” elements in a pay line wins $50, then row 2 would have a winner of $50. Pay tables can express wins in several ways, including in dollar values, or in a multiple of the player's wager, for example.
The pay lines can be horizontal, diagonal, V-shaped or any other configuration as desired by the operator. For example, if three matching elements in a diagonal line across the FIG. 1b matrix 12 constituted a pay line, then the matrix would have a winner on the basis of the “Dollar” element in reel 1, row 1 PLUS reel 2, row 2 PLUS reel 3, row 3. The pay lines can also be changed depending upon the matrix involved. While the highlighted matrix in FIG. 1a is 3×4, it will be appreciated that there can obviously be matrices of 3×3, 3×5, 4×5, etc.
A Random Number Generator (RNG) typically determines the stop position of each reel strip during operation. Each reel in the simple example of FIG. 1a shows ten stop positions.
Slot machine and other games, whether requiring software or not, must be adequately tested prior to play in order to ensure that proper payouts will be made. In the past, the following steps are typically involved for manual testing of slot and VLT games:                1) An administrative group or department provides the game details to the tester, including, for example, reel strip configurations, payline and payout information for each of the elements that are present in the game. As a result, the game tester knows what the game will payout for different wins (e.g., five of a kind of element X yields Prize A, and 4 of a kind of element Y yields Prize B). The administration game details also provide other game rules and functionality information, such as which element(s) can act like a “wild” element, which element is a “bonus” trigger, which element pays as a “scatter” and whether the game pays for only one direction, for example.        2) Based on the functionalities, market regulations and any other game distinctions or limitations, the game tester knows the pay line configuration for the game. This configuration helps the tester know where each element should appear on the screen to qualify for payout.        3) The game tester then creates test cases (e.g., specific screens) that will make the game process all aspects of the pay table. These test cases contain different checks consisting of all of the elements to make sure that the game is correctly evaluating all payouts on any given screen.        4) The game tester sends numbers (i.e., the required RNG stop positions (outputs)) to the game to create those specific screens that will yield the desired payouts. Then, the game tester plays the game to check if the game is paying out what is expected from it.        5) With wild elements, bonus trigger elements and scatter elements, for example, the game tester needs to create every possible test case (test screen) that might yield a different payout result. This includes negative testing, too, where testers need to check that the game is not paying when it should not.        
There are several drawbacks to traditional game testing. First, depending upon the total number of elements, the number of elements per reel, the pay lines and the pay table configuration, manual testing of a single game can take a very long time. Second, a manual game tester can only evaluate one game at a time. Third, the manual game tester generally must test games using a “brute force” method that tests every permutation of every reel. If advanced games, such as those involving wild elements, scatter elements and/or bonus triggers are involved, it becomes even more complicated and time consuming for the manual tester. Past game testing efforts are thus time intensive and highly inefficient.